THE ten largest broadband service providers in the world gained over 23m subscribers in the year to the end of March.

Together they have 191m subscribers, or almost 40% of the world's 492m broadband customers, according to TeleGeography, a research firm.

The lion's share is taken by China Telecom and China Unicom, which together account for a fifth of all global broadband subcribers. Both companies gained around 9m more subscribers over the past year, equivalent to the entire broadband subscriber base of Verizon